China’s state-run Global Times newspaper mocked President Joe Biden on Friday, quoting his declaration, “America is back,” in a headline about his decision to bomb Syria on Thursday evening.

Biden made the remark in a speech about foreign policy in early February, in which he vowed to limit American military engagement.

“And they know when you speak, you speak for me,” Biden told diplomats at the State Department. “And so — so is the message I want the world to hear today: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.”

On Thursday, 36 days into his presidency, Biden took unilateral action in Syria, ordering what the Pentagon dubbed a “defensive precision strike” on members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a legal wing of the Iraqi armed forces.

China has successfully launched its largest carrier rocket with a new-generation spacecraft today, marking a significant progress for the country towards landing a man on the moon.

The Long March-5B carrier rocket took off at 6pm local time at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in the southern island province of Hainan, state broadcaster CCTV announced on Tuesday.

The spacecraft carried by the rocket is expected to one day transport astronauts to a space station that China plans to complete by 2022 - and eventually to the moon.

A US warship sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, the second such passage under the Biden administration. The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said the guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur made the provocative maneuver.

Beijing denounced the provocation. “The move artificially creates risk factors in the Taiwan Strait, deliberately undermines regional peace and stability, we are firmly opposed to this,” a spokesperson for China’s People’s Liberation Army said.

Earlier this month, the USS John McCain, another guided-missile destroyer, steamed through the Taiwan Strait. After sailing through the Strait, the McCain conducted what the US calls a Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) near the Chinese-claimed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

Former US diplomat Chas Freeman urged Washington to focus on making “serious repairs” at home to effectively compete with China, as US President Joe Biden’s administration reviews US policy towards China amid increasingly strained relations.

Freeman is a well-known China hand who was the principal interpreter for Richard Nixon during the 1972 China trip that paved the way for normalised diplomatic relations.

In an online address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs this month he argued that the US needed to avoid defining its China policy as a fight against authoritarianism and to focus instead on renewing its competitive capacity given its “unprecedented state of domestic disarray and demoralisation”.

Taiwan is suffering the "island's worst drought in decades", according to Nikkei. And this is terrible news for semiconductor manufacturers, who are being forced to make cuts on water usage while at the same time desperately trying to scramble and play catch-up with a drought of their own.

Taiwan is now planning to "further tighten water use in several cities that are home to a cluster of important manufacturers," including plants in Taoyuan, Taichung, Hsinchu and Miaoli. They are going to be asked to cut consumption by up to 11%. Chiayi and Tainan, where Taiwan Semiconductor is based, will be asked to take a 7% cut.

All of these cuts come on top of another 7% cut already put into effect last month.

A letter sent Tuesday from members of Congress to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm is demanding a “prompt and thorough investigation” into the National Institutes of Health’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party-run Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The 28 congressional signers, led by Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., write:

The NIH, unfortunately, has played a major role in supporting [the Wuhan Institute of Virology] and this treacherous research and the promotion of spurious claims dismissing the NIH-funded lab’s potential role in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) on Tuesday presented a bill that attempts to block federal funding for American colleges and universities that have connections to the Chinese regime, a step she explains will combat Beijing’s attempts to “undermine” the United States.

The legislation called the “End College Chinese Communist Partnerships Act,” would limit taxpayer funds from proceeding to institutions that have partnerships with Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes (CI) and the People’s Republic of China.

“The CCP is partaking in genocide, censoring speech, & influencing our academia. Taxpayer $$ should NOT fund their partnerships with U.S. schools! Period,” the congresswoman announced in a statement on a Twitter post.

An Israeli cybersecurity firm announced Monday that China has used a hacking tool initially developed by the US National Security Agency.

In a new report, Check Point Software Technologies said the Chinese malware, which it dubbed “Jian,” exploited a vulnerability in Windows. It said the exploit was a replica of one used by the secretive “Equation Group” at the NSA.

Check Point said the tool was developed in 2014 and has been used since at least the following year, two years before cyber weapons made by the Equation Group were leaked online. The Tel Aviv-based firm hypothesized that Chinese spies may have obtained the code during an Equation Group operation against a target in China, captured it while monitoring an Equation Group attack against a third party, or acquired it during a Chinese operation against the Equation Group.

The capital outflows from China that prompted the country to engage in a shock devaluation are a distant memory, at least according to Goldman's preferred gauge of FX flows.

Looking at the latest round of SAFE data, Goldman's Chinese economists find net inflows of around US$35BN in January, vs US$93BN in December last year, cumulatively the highest on record. Goods trade related FX inflows remained strong, while foreign buying of onshore bonds rose further in January (even though there were modest outflows through the stock connect program).

In the wake of the Trump administration, US-China relations are at their lowest point in decades. For weeks now, Chinese officials have been calling for better relations, and on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi continued the call.

“We stand ready to have candid communication with the US side, and engage in dialogues aimed at solving problems,” Wang said. He also called on the US to lift trade restrictions and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs. The US responded sharply to Wang’s remarks.

“I think his comments reflect the continued pattern of Beijing’s tendency to avert blame for its predatory economic practices, its lack of transparency, its failure to honor its international agreements, and its repression of universal human rights,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in response to Wang.

China will ease restrictions on investing abroad, including raising the QDII quota for institutions and studying the feasibility of allowing individuals to buy foreign securities within their annual limit, a State Administration of Foreign Exchange official said Friday. Currently, Chinese residents are allowed to purchase up to $50,000 a year of foreign currencies, but the funds can only be used for purposes such as traveling and studying, not for buying overseas property, securities or life insurance.

The authorities have already taken a slew of steps since late last year to encourage outflows and temper inflows in a bid to slow the yuan rally. To underscore the appreciation pressure, Friday’s data showed China’s current account surplus surged to $130 billion in the fourth quarter, the most since 2008.

Taiwan’s air force scrambled on Friday after eight Chinese fighter aircraft flew into the southwestern part of its air defence zone in another display of stepped-up military activity around the democratic island.

Beijing, which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, says it is responding to what it calls “collusion” between Taipei and Washington, Taiwan’s main international backer and weapons supplier.

The Taiwanese Defence Ministry said four Chinese J-16s and four JH-7s as well as an electronic warfare aircraft flew near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the top part of the South China Sea.

The air force scrambled, with “radio warnings issued and air defence missile systems deployed to monitor the activity,” the ministry said.

Taiwan’s air force has activated its missile system after eight Chinese fighter jets flew into the southwestern part of its air defence identification zone, in an uptick in tensions as Taipei announced a new defence minister and intelligence chief.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said on Friday four Chinese J-16s and four JH-7s, as well as an electronic warfare aircraft, flew near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the top part of the South China Sea, into the southwestern area of its air defence identification zone.

In July 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit, that it must hand over information and materials to its Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) partner in China:

The National Institutes of Health told a small New York-based nonprofit that it must hand over information and materials from a research partner in Wuhan, China, that is under scrutiny by the Trump administration to win back a multimillion-dollar research grant.

Among the items the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance must provide to resume funding is a sample of the new coronavirus that the Wuhan researchers used to determine its genetic sequence, according to a July 8 letter from the NIH viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

New national rules requiring clergy to embrace the leadership of the Communist Party and China’s socialist system are expected to compound limits on religious freedom in the country, according to analysts.

The new rules – Measures for the Administration of Religious Personnel – were published by the State Administration for Religious Affairs early this month and will go into effect in May.

While the measures underlined many of the controls already in place under existing supervisory guidelines, their packaging as a national regulation gave them greater political force, one observer said.

Since 2015, President Xi Jinping has sought to bring religions such as Islam and Christianity under the party’s control through a process of “Sinicisation”, and stressed that religious adherents must reject foreign influence.

In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”

Chinese state media did not relent in its attacks on President Joe Biden, publishing a column on Thursday accusing him of attempting to “ring-fence China,” a day after Biden appeared to justify the construction of over 1,000 concentration camps for ethnic minorities in the country.

Speaking at a town hall event produced by CNN, Biden claimed that placing Uyghur individuals and members of other Muslim-majority ethnic groups in concentration camps was a way for dictator Xi Jinping to keep the country “unified.” He claimed that he had chastised Xi on China’s litany of human rights abuses, but that the comments were perfunctory, and that Xi “gets it” that Biden is politically obligated to mention the issue.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) called out the “weaknesses” of the Biden administration’s policy towards communist China this week, in part, by exposing the ties between several political appointees, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Beijing.

Ahead of the push, Breitbart News’ Matt Boyle exclusively learned from RSC Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) that the panel is launching a legislative blitz starting Tuesday against Biden to expose his weaknesses in combating the threat posed by China.

A six-page memo issued by the RSC suggested that the link between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a long-time Biden confidant now charged with carrying out the U.S. foreign policy agenda, may prompt a conflict of interest when it comes to confronting China.

China is reportedly looking into curbing the export of rare-earth minerals to the United States, which may become a new source of friction between the two countries.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in January proposed draft controls on the production and export of rare-earth minerals and provided 30 days for public comment.

During the comment period, industry executives were asked to assess how U.S. and European companies could be affected if Beijing decided to cut rare-earth exports during a bilateral dispute, the Financial Times reported, citing people involved in the discussions.

“The government wants to know if the U.S. may have trouble making F-35 fighter jets if China imposes an export ban,” a Chinese government adviser told the Financial Times.

There's increasing suspicion that China had a "hidden hand" in Myanmar's coup d'etat which kicked off Feb.1 upon the arrest and detention of the country's civilian leadership.

The substantial rumors that Beijing assisted in the military coup that's plunged its southeast Asian neighbor into unrest - with a near total internet blackout and armored vehicles patrolling the streets - have grown to the point that it prompted a formal denial from China’s ambassador to Myanmar.

Ambassador Chen Hai early this week responded to growing pro-democracy protests that have formed outside the Chinese embassy in the city Yangon. It a written public statement the ambassador claimed to have had no "prior knowledge" of the coup, further saying that allegations of Communist China's assisting in setting up a telecommunications firewall in cooperation with military coup forces are "laughable".

Top conservative lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are launching a legislative blitz against Democrat President Joe Biden, exposing his weakness when it comes to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party and Biden’s coziness with the Communists in Beijing.

The effort, led by Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), will consist of a messaging push as well as the introduction and rollout of a series of legislative proposals designed to curb Chinese influence and aggression and expose the Democrats and Biden for being weak on China. Banks and his team detailed the effort for Breitbart News exclusively ahead of the push, which will begin on Tuesday and carry on throughout the week. Under Banks, the RSC is planning blitzes like this on major issues frequently as a counter to Biden’s agenda pushed from the White House and by congressional Democrats.

While speaking at a CNN town hall in Wisconsin, President Biden appeared to excuse the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide in Xinjiang as a “cultural norm.”

“Chinese leaders, if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been – the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home,” he begins before abruptly adding “vastly overstated.”

He continues, explaining the rationale of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping:

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will meet with members of the world’s most powerful military alliance on Wednesday for the first time since joining the Biden administration.

NATO meets Wednesday and Thursday to discuss an array of challenges facing the 30-member group. The virtual meetings will be a glimpse into President Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda and comes on the heels of his calls to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with America’s closest allies.

“When we strengthen our alliances we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they reach our shores,” Biden said during a speech at the State Department. “America cannot afford to be absent any longer on the world stage,” he added.

Biden’s message broke sharply from his predecessor’s “America First” policy, which on occasion seemed to vex NATO members.

China has become the only country to boost both exports and imports to the European Union amid the pandemic, dethroning the US as the bloc’s top commercial partner last year.

According to the data published by the European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, the 27-nation bloc’s imports from China hit €383.5 billion ($465.6 billion) in 2020, increasing by 5.6 percent year-on-year. Exports were up 2.2 percent to reach €202.5 billion ($245.9 billion).

British lawmakers underlined that foreign investments in the UK defence supply chain should be restricted to companies from NATO countries or London's allies outside the North Atlantic Alliance.

Beijing may snap up more UK aerospace companies in order to obtain access to their technology and increase its military buildup, the UK House of Commons Defence Committee has warned in a report.

According to the study released on Sunday, venture capital funds "represent an avenue for hostile foreign investors to gain entry into the UK defence supply chain".

On Friday, World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that all hypotheses related to the origins of the coronavirus "remain open and require further analysis and studies", following a month-long WHO mission in Wuhan, China.

Beijing has lashed out at the White House over its allegations that Chinese authorities withheld some coronavirus outbreak-related information from World Health Organisation (WHO) experts.

A statement by the Chinese Embassy in Washington argued that the US had already "gravely damaged international cooperation on COVID-19" and was now "pointing fingers at other countries who have been faithfully supporting the WHO and at the WHO itself".

The Chinese military has shown off its recently delivered exoskeletons, using them to deliver Lunar New Year supplies to a remote border outpost in Tibet. Beijing is rapidly adopting the pioneering technology.

A report on Saturday by the state broadcaster CCTV showed the new passive exoskeletons in use, helping to bring some festivity to Friday’s celebrations. The troops strapped on the smart-braces to get an extra oomph for the last leg of a supply run in China’s Ngari Prefecture.

China's space agency on Friday (February 12) released two videos showing its Tianwen-1 probe entering the orbit of Mars earlier this week, saying the spacecraft was sending its Lunar New Year greetings back from the red planet.

After a 6-1/2 month journey through space, the Tianwen-1 on Wednesday (February 10) slowed to a speed at which it could be captured by the pull of Mars' gravity and became the second spacecraft to reach the planet this month, with a US probe set to arrive and immediately attempt a landing next week.

Two clips lasting just under a minute were released by the China National Space Administration. The footage, shot from cameras attached to the uncrewed craft, shows it vibrating as its solar-powered thrusters are switched on to slow it down, with the spherical outline of Mars and even craters on the planet's surface seen in the background as the probe hurtles past.

Disney has taken political stances against Donald Trump, the state of Georgia, and Republican members of Congress. But when it comes to China and its human rights atrocities, the Magic Kingdom sides with the Middle Kingdom every time.

In the latest example of corporate complicity through silence, the Walt Disney Co. has refused to comment on a recent report that China is overseeing the systematic rape of ethnic minority women in the western Xinjiang region. The BBC News reported earlier this month that women in China’s concentration camps for Uyghurs have been repeatedly raped, sexually abused, and tortured.

One witness told the BBC News that women were removed from the cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. On Thursday, China retaliated against the BBC News by suspending the network from its airwaves, claiming that the British broadcaster has harmed China’s national interests and ethnic unity.

A Friday report from Bloomberg News revealed China was able to spy on American computer systems for a decade by supplying compromised chips to Super Micro Computer Inc. (Supermicro), one of America’s leading motherboard providers.

According to the report, U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of this wide-reaching Chinese espionage program but did not warn either Supermicro or its customers, because they prioritized monitoring China’s surveillance techniques and developing countermeasures against them.

The lengthy Bloomberg report documented the known history of the Chinese espionage scheme, which took advantage of Supermicro’s reliance upon global supply chains to obtain chips for its motherboards at low prices.

The US defence department has revealed more details about its new task force to evaluate its strategy on China, with technology among its priorities as the two countries' rivalry looks set to continue under Joe Biden, the new American president.

Ely Ratner, special assistant to US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and leader of the task force, said on Thursday that the group would examine all activities in the Pentagon related to what Austin has called America's "pacing challenge" to ensure efforts were prioritised and coordinated.

"The goal of the task force is ... not to 'boil the ocean'," said Ratner, a long-time Asia expert who was deputy national security adviser to Biden when he was vice-president during the Obama administration.

The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Tehran in January 2016 laid the foundations for a future partnership agreement. He stated that he sought to open a “new chapter” in China’s relations with Iran. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “The Islamic Republic will never forget China’s cooperation during the sanctions era.”

In July 2020, ‘New York Times’ reported it had acquired an 18-page document titled, ‘Iran-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’, which concluded a long-term trade and military negotiations between China and Iran – and would see China invest $400 billion over the next 25 years in Iran.

This news could give you a reason to stay up at night. Joe Biden’s administration is getting more aggressive against China. Biden has unveiled a Pentagon “China task force” to deal with the “challenges” China poses.

As the Asian nation has over one billion in population, a war with the CCP would end badly for the United States. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that a war with China is already all but lost. Maybe everyone except Joe Biden. Because he’s flexing muscle he doesn’t have toward the Chinese. Biden has launched a military task force to assess US policy toward Beijing, vowing to confront the “China challenge” as he continues his predecessor’s naval deployments in the country’s backyard, according to numerous reports.

Nearly a month after his inauguration and more than three months since the presidential election, Joe Biden held his first call with Xi Jinping since entering the White House, just days after his secretary of state warned Beijing that Washington would hold China accountable for its “abuses”.

In a Wednesday night tweet, Biden said that he spoke today with President Xi "to offer good wishes to the Chinese people for Lunar New Year." He also shared concerns "about Beijing’s economic practices, human rights abuses, and coercion of Taiwan" and told him that Biden "will work with China when it benefits the American people."

In what at the time was a historic event, taking advantage of the early signs of retail euphoria, back in June bankrupt Hertz tried and almost succeeded in selling shares while in bankruptcy. Only the last minute intervention of a bankruptcy judge prevented what would have been a $1 billion "at the money" offering to Robinhood traders.

But where Hertz failed a Chinese company has succeeded.

Bloomberg reports that a Chinese solar power plant firm raised $117.4 million overnight selling 2 billion new shares in Hong Kong -- an unremarkable placement at first sight... except that GCL New Energy Holdings is technically bankrupt, having defaulted on a $500 million bond just last week.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a phone conversation with US President Joe Biden, said cooperation was the only choice for the two countries because a clash would lead to a disaster for the entire world.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed the need for cooperation between Washingon and Beijing after discussing bilateral issues with his American counterpart, calling their first telephone conversation a positive signal for the entire world.

"Sino-American cooperation is in many ways beneficial both for the United States and China and for the entire world. A confrontation between China and the United States is absolutely a disaster for the two countries and for the entire world", China Central Television quoted Xi as saying.

India and China have reached an agreement on disengagement in the north and south bank of Pangong Lake after nine rounds of military commander-level talks. As per the agreement, both sides will cease their forward deployments in a phased, coordinated, and verified manner.

The Indian Army has released the first visuals of disengagement that started after reaching an agreement between the military commanders of India and China on Wednesday. A 75-second video starts with a host of military leaders from the Indian Army and People's Liberation Army (PLA) meeting and shaking hands in the Chusul Sector of the eastern Ladakh region. The clip later shows a PLA Type-99 tank move back from its forward deployment towards its permanent base as per the aforementioned agreement. After that, an Indian Army Russian-origin T-72 tank scales down from the Chushul heights.

China’s first interplanetary mission, Tianwen-1, successfully entered Mars orbit Feb. 10 following a 202-day journey through deep space.

Tianwen-1 initiated a near 15-minute burn of its 3000N main engine at 6:52 a.m. Eastern allowing the five-ton spacecraft to slow down and be gravitationally captured by Mars.

The Mars orbit insertion maneuver was designed to place the Tianwen-1 into an elliptical orbit of 400 by 180,000 kilometers inclined by 10 degrees, with an orbital period of 10 days.

With Mars more than 192 million kilometers away from Earth and a light time delay of 10 minutes and 40 seconds, the braking burn was by necessity pre-programmed. Intervention would not be possible in the event of an issue.

Canada is changing its geopolitical intentions. Apparently, this country, which has always been passive in the face of American decisions, wants to take more aggressive positions on the international stage. The Canadian government recently announced that it will finance opponents against Lukashenko in Belarus and now the Canadian intelligence director has made a note regarding Moscow and Beijing as “the biggest threats to Canada”. Ottawa visibly wants to take more incisive actions in the international scenario, perhaps because it doubts Washington’s ability to guarantee its interests at the moment. However, the country has no material conditions to carry out its plans and may be taking positions which are complicated to maintain in the long term.

An Australian specialist has said that China wished to be able to split New Zealand from its more traditional allies of Australia, America, Canada, and the United Kingdom—the countries that include the Five Eyes alliance.

Associate Prof. Salvatore Babones from The University of Sydney told The Epoch Times that China would like to see a more remote New Zealand.

“China would dearly love to split New Zealand from the Five Eyes alliance,” Babones said. “New Zealand has long been the weak link in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, and the Ardern government seems much more strongly committed to maintaining its trade relationship with communist China than to maintaining its security relationship with the free world.”

Joe Biden has scrapped a policy instituted by President Trump that mandated US colleges and universities to report all connections with the Chinese government to encourage transparency in the face of evidence that CCP propaganda is infiltrating the education system.

Axios reports that Trump enacted a policy demanding that education institutions disclose all dealings with the controversial Chinese Confucius Institute.

Trump made sure that under the new policy any institutions failing to comply would lose certification for the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

However, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs documents show that Biden scrapped the policy on January 26, with an ICE official also confirming to Campus Reform that the policy was done away with by Biden.

It was only about 3 weeks ago that we published a piece called "Elon Musk's Chinese Fairy Tale Will Eventually Come To An End". The purpose of the piece was to reiterate what we have been saying for months: that Elon Musk's fairy tale with the Chinese government would eventually, as all relationships with the CCP do, come to an end. Just ask Jack Ma.

We were baffled that Musk had been able to hold it together even this long in China, given Tesla's short history there:

So far, Musk has been able to sidestep some ugly press in China, including out of control Tesla vehicles, forced recalls, constant price cuts and disgruntled customers. So far, Musk is holding it together in China.

But then we asked, "How long can the good times last?"

The Guardian and numerous media outlets published an open letter backed by Canadian MPs urging Olympians to boycott the event, sparking further tensions with Beijing a year ahead of hosting the world's largest sporting competition.

The Chinese government could potentially respond to nations boycotting the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with "serious" sanctions, the editor-in-chief of state-backed tabloid Global Times said on Twitter.

On Monday Russia announced plans to hold joint naval drills with Iran and China in the Indian Ocean, according to Reuters, which cites comments made by Moscow's ambassador to Tehran. Russian Ambassador Levan Dzhagaryan said, "The next multilateral naval exercises will take place in the northern part of the Indian Ocean in mid-February 2021."

It comes just after the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier was ordered out of its Mideast region of responsibility at the start of this month. The Nimitz is headed home to its base in Washington state, after Trump kept it in the Indian Ocean and gulf region on standby amid ratcheting tensions with Iran. Biden then ordered it home within his first couple weeks in office.

Chinese state media is threatening Western officials and nations with "serious sanctions" should there be any largescale attempt to boycott the China-hosted Winter Olympic games scheduled for 2022.

It comes amid a growing and increasingly growing movement, centered especially out of Canada, which is seeking to do just that. A number of Canadian MPs are currently calling for a boycott based on widespread and persistent reports that Communist authorities in China are carrying out systematic persecution of ethnic Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang region.

The movement to hold China to account was picked up in The Guardian late last week, which highlighted the well-organized efforts of over 180 human rights groups that have called for the boycott.

During his wide-ranging interview with CBS televised just ahead of the Super Bowl Sunday night, President Biden said China is in for "extreme competition" from the United States under his leadership while still urging for the two economic powerhouses to establish a new relationship which avoids conflict.

"I know him pretty well," Biden said in the "Face the Nation" interview while saying that when he next speaks to President Xi the two will have "a whole lot to talk about." But Biden also vowed to hold Beijing to account for its severe human rights abuses - in reference to widespread reports of severe persecution and 'reeducation camps' targeting the ethnic Uighur Muslim minority.

"I’ve said to him all along that we need not have a conflict," Biden said of his Chinese counterpart.

The United States military has kicked off joint war games with Australian and Japan on the Western Pacific island of Guam which will specifically focus on countering a theoretical future aerial attack from Russia or China.

The joint exercises, dubbed 'Cope North 2021' began last Wednesday and are scheduled to run all the way to February 19. Crucially the exercises will included F-35A joint strike fighters, marking the first time the advanced stealth jets are deployed to Andersen Air Force Base at Guam.

"Exercise Cope North 21 aims to provide an opportunity for the forces to hone their combined air tactics while enhancing support to the Indo-Pacific region," according to a US military statement. "Australia is participating for the 11th time in the US Pacific Air Forces’ largest multilateral exercise."

Months of drought in southern and eastern China have left more than 300,000 people with drinking water shortages, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Sunday.

Recorded rainfall since October in regions south of China’s Yangtze River has been 50 to 80 percent lower than usual, the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources said on February 4. Roughly 2.4 million people across the southeastern coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong have already been affected by the drought, and concerns are “growing” for people residing in Guangxi, Hunan, and Yunnan provinces, the ministry said.

“More than 500,000 hectares of arable land” in China have been affected by the drought so far, “leaving 330,000 people in rural areas without a sufficient supply of potable water,” the ministry revealed.

The US has proposed the first summit between the leaders of the “Quad” group, media reports said on Sunday, as the new administration looks to strengthen a framework that some observers believe could develop into a “mini-Nato” designed to counter China’s growing power in the Asia-Pacific.

Washington has already proposed an online meeting with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported on Sunday.

Joe Biden’s administration has already said it will build on the previous administration’s work in setting up the group, one of the few Donald Trump policies it has decided to continue.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that the White House sees the Quad as “fundamental, a foundation upon which to build substantial American policy in the Indo-Pacific region”.

Israel has refused an American request to inspect the new Chinese-built Haifa port that will be operated for the next 25 years by SIPG, a Chinese company. This is being seen in both countries as a test case of Israel’s relationship with China and with the United States.

Israeli officials declined to comment on the story, first reported by the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz.

The domestic political chaos here has pushed the issue onto the backburner. But after the March elections — the fourth in less than two years — the new government must deal with the problem.

Sources here say the Biden administration will raise the issue again. President Biden has not yet called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; he has called many other world leaders.

Looking at its achievements over the past decade, nobody would doubt China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft-land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth.

The race between several nations and private companies, however, is far from over. China is now approaching Mars with its Tianwen-1 mission, due to arrive on February 10. A successful insertion into orbit – the rover won’t land until May — will mark another crucial milestone for more than one reason.

The head of US Strategic Command is warning that nuclear war with Russia or China is “a real possibility,” pointing to “destabilizing” behaviors of America’s rivals. He also claims the Pentagon is not “stuck in the Cold War.”

“There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,” STRATCOM chief and Vice Admiral Charles Richard wrote in the February issue of the US Naval Institute's monthly magazine.

STRATCOM, which oversees the US nuclear arsenal, views the probability of nuclear war as low. But with Russia and China advancing their capabilities and continuing to “exert themselves globally,” Richard said STRATCOM must understand what it's facing.

More than a dozen British universities are under investigation over commercial relationships with the Chinese government that might break laws designed to protect national security and human rights, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The institutions – which include some of the most prestigious universities in the country – could be hit by ‘enforcement notices’ imposed by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs over alleged breaches of export controls in their dealings with Beijing.

It is understood the security services fear some academics have been sharing pioneering British technology with China that could be facilitating the dictatorial Communist government’s repression of minorities and dissidents.

The YouTuber known as Roaring Kitty, who became the face of the GameStop stock frenzy and also worked until last week as a broker, could be in legal trouble for potential violations of federal rules governing brokers' communications with the public.

Keith Gill, 34, placed a huge bet on GameStop shares more than a year ago and shared his ideas about the stock online in the months leading up to the 'meme stock' bubble.

But his commentary may create a problem for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., which employed him and had a duty to supervise him.

In his first major foreign policy address, President Joe Biden vowed to confront the enemies of ‘democracy’ globally, while seeking to reclaim America’s ‘moral credibility’ and leadership in LGBT and climate change issues.

Speaking at the State Department headquarters in the nation’s capital on Thursday, Biden outlined his foreign policy vision in a 20-minute address, laying out a sprawling list of priorities for his administration, among them countering supposed US “adversaries.”

“American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy,” Biden said early in his remarks.

The superpower clash between China and the U.S. continued on Friday as a U.S. Navy ship sailed near the Chinese-controlled Paracel Islands in the heavily disrupted South China Sea, only to get an stern rebuke (and what some would call, an appropriate response) from Beijing.

The USS John S. McCain, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, entered the waters near Paracel islands Friday without China's permission on a "freedom of navigation operation," the first known operation in the heavily disputed area under the new Biden administration.

Shortly after, CGTN reported that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) "expelled" the destroyer after it "trespassed" into China's territorial waters. Tian Junli, a spokesperson for the PLA Southern Theater Command, said the move "seriously infringed China's sovereignty and security." He said PLA troops in the region are on "high alert at all times to protect the peace and stability of the region."

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview aired on Feb. 4 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will use artificial intelligence to comb through troves of personal data on U.S. citizens recovered from Chinese technology and apps and use the intelligence as a weapon to strong-arm the United States.

“They will use that information. They will use artificial intelligence to gather it up. And then they will turn around and tell us that if we don’t act in a way that’s consistent with what the Chinese Communist Party wants, they will impose real costs on the United States,” Pompeo told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.

Pompeo was responding to a question on whether the administration of President Joe Biden should keep in place the sanctions and other restrictions imposed on Chinese companies by former President Donald Trump.

Following its revolution in1949, China adopted a new economic model based on the basic needs of the population instead of profit. This vital switch resulted in lifting over one billion people out of poverty. Disregarding flaws of the Chinese political model, when measured by Purchasing Power Parity its economy is larger than that of the US by 25 percent. Becoming an economic superpower in this short period of time, and getting ahead of the US, China has already changed the world balance of power. The purpose of this essay is to use several historically proven criteria to determine how China’s dream happened, and why it will continue to win the economic race with the US, peacefully or otherwise. It starts with comparing the Chinese and US economic models, their goals that are reflected by policies, and the race itself. Finally, it will discuss the outcomes, options, and best choices in dealing with China.

In a much anticipated speech which marked the first time China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, addressed an American audience under the new administration at the New York based National Committee on US-China Relations, the top Communist Party official warned the US it must stop interfering Beijing's "core interests" in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet affairs or else it risks crossing China's "red line".

Ostensibly a gesture signaling China wants cooperation with the US under Biden, Yang as director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission and member of the powerful 25-member Politburo, urged that Biden abandon Trump's "misguided policies against China" which has plunged the relationship into its "most difficult period since the establishment of diplomatic ties".

Just days after China sent a not-so-subtle warning to Taiwan regarding independence (and by extension, to US President Joe Biden), inside sources at the FBI are leaking details about another cyberattack linked to Solarwind, which made headlines in December after operatives believed to be sponsored by the Russian government used an exploit to compromise classified systems.

This time, however, the villain is China - which federal agents believe used the same SolarWinds exploit as the suspected Russians to break into US government computers and access an unknown quantity of data, according to "five people familiar with the matter."

One of the agencies believed to have been hacked by China is the National Finance Center, an obscure agency in the federal government that handles payroll and other sensitive data. It's housed within the Department of Agriculture, but contains information from employees across the federal government.

Most foreign policy leaders and professionals in the United States support the use of American troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, but it is opposed by the majority of the US public, a new survey has found.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs said in a report published on Monday that most of the more than 900 surveyed opinion leaders – including executive branch officials, congressional staff, think tank scholars, academics, journalists and interest group representatives – favoured a US military defence of Taiwan in an invasion scenario.

But it found only 41 per cent of the public supported military intervention. Public support has grown significantly in recent years, however, up from 26 per cent in 2014.

Despite some "positive" developments during military commander level talks between India and China, the two sides failed to diffuse tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Since President Ram Nath Kovind confirmed the Indian Army's deployment, a video has surfaced allegedly showing the PLA building up military assets close to the LAC.

Calling it "unfortunate attempts", Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has accused China of employing force to change the status quo along the nations' unresolved borders. The minister, however, emphasised that the government will defend the country's border at any cost.

"India is vigilant and prepared to counter and defeat any misadventure to defend our people and territorial integrity at all costs", Rajnath Singh said while inaugurating the AeroIndia 2021 exhibition in Bengaluru.

Tursunay Ziawudun spent nine months inside China's vast and secretive system of internment camps in the Xinjiang region. According to independent estimates, more than a million men and women have been detained in the sprawling network of camps, which China says exist for the "re-education" of the Uighurs and other minorities.

Human rights groups say the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uighurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei saw a substantial drop in both smartphone shipments and market share in China market in 2020, following a tough year of US government’s strangle on semiconductors supply, allowing US rival Apple to rise to fill up the void.

Under the US’ relentless assault, Huawei saw a drop in market share in China from 38.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 25.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, the only one of the top five smartphone makers in China whose share declined, an International Data Corp (IDC) report showed on Tuesday.

Industry experts said that Huawei’s rare market share decline reflected the US block on chips that affected the supply chain of the company’s high-end mobile series.

There were 86.4 million smartphones shipped in China in the fourth quarter of 2020, almost flat year-on-year, with Huawei being the only smartphone maker among the top five that did not grow. The others were Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Apple.

Navies are racing to develop hypersonic missiles which may change the pace of naval warfare. Russia will deploy the Zircon hypersonic missile aboard warships and submarines. The US Navy has started down the path of the common hypersonic glide body (c-HGB) for its destroyers. Meanwhile China’s latest hypersonic weapon is something completely different; it is air launched.

The massive new missile, labelled CH-AS-X-13, is probably the largest air-launched missile in the world.

The missile was first reported by Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow at the Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in April 2018. More recently candid images have appeared on Chinese social media. These provide a clearer view of the novel weapon.

China added to its space reconnaissance capabilities with the launch of a trio of satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center last week.

A Long March 4C rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Friday (Jan. 29) at 12:47 p.m. local time (0447 GMT; 11:47 p.m. Jan. 28 EST), according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), China's main space contractor.

The rocket sent three Yaogan 31 satellites into orbits of about 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) in altitude and inclined by 63 degrees. This means the satellites pass over the Earth as far north as southern Alaska and as far south as the South Shetland Islands, just north of the Antarctic Peninsula,

Since 2020, Americans have been implored, even trained, to accept fiat realities at home that would not so long ago have seemed inconceivable. The “new normal” includes arbitrary lockdowns, curfews, censorship, the burgeoning domestic terror war, and a de facto government economic assault on small businesses, the poor, and the middle class. The American people have been encouraged to wear two masks and binge Tiger King on Netflix instead of rightfully objecting to this faux humanitarian tyranny.

Now it seems the ruling class is preparing us to not only accept but support an ever intensifying, hostile stance against China. This other potentially catastrophic “new normal” is rapidly morphing into a war footing.

Judicial Watch announced today that it received 848 pages of documents revealing the contract materials and communications related to a $1 billion contract for face masks between the California Office of Emergency Services and the Chinese Communist Party linked BYD.

BYD reportedly has been barred by law from some federal contracts for providing faulty electric vehicles and lithium batteries to American buyers.

The documents reveal that the Office of Emergency Services Assistant Chief Counsel admits that they deviated from their normal procurement process for this contract. Additionally, in the contract between Office of Emergency Services and BYD, BYD uses a different name, Global Healthcare Product Solutions, LLC., and BYD provides no liability or warranty for the masks if they are faulty.

The Biden administration has just endorsed one of China's most vicious attack lines against the United States.

The new administration's actions look as if they are setting a pattern for its responses to Beijing on the disease and other matters.

On January 26, Biden signed his executive order titled "Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States."

BGI Group, the world’s largest genomics company which provided COVID-19 tests worldwide including India, has been exposed as a front for the Chinese military. According to Bill Evanina, America’s top counterintelligence officer, Chinese military is trying to collect DNA samples from foreign nations using BGI Group as a front, for use in their Bioweapons program..

BGI Group Providing Worldwide COVID-19 Tests A Front For Chinese Military
BGI Group, the world’s largest genomics company, has worked with China’s military on research that ranges from mass testing for respiratory pathogens to brain science, a Reuters review of research, patent filings and other documents has found.

The review, of more than 40 publicly available documents and research papers in Chinese and English, shows BGI’s links to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) include research with China’s top military supercomputing experts.